Who Represents “We the People”?

It's a bit more complex than you might think

President Trump’s strongest supporters frequently argue that it is he, and he alone, who represents the will of the American people. In doing so they are making not just a political or even religious argument—see, e.g., the flags, t-shirts, and posters that say, “Jesus Is My Savior and Trump Is My President”—but a Constitutional argument.

Stephen Miller, the White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Homeland Security, stated at a February 20, 2025, press conference that “The whole will of democracy is imbued into the elected president. That president then appoints staff to then impose that democratic will onto the government.” More significantly, he added this: “A president is elected by the whole American people. He’s the only official in the entire government that is elected by the entire nation. Right? Judges are appointed. Members of Congress are elected at the district or state level. Just one man.”

Let’s dig into these claims.

On the one hand, let’s be clear about the 2024 presidential election. There is no question that Donald Trump won both the popular vote (49.71%-48.24%) and the electoral vote (312-226), and it’s the latter that Constitutionally makes a candidate the president.

On the other hand, however, the January 20, 2025 edition of The Hill reports that “President Donald Trump and his allies have called his win a ‘landslide’ and ‘blowout.’ From their telling, Trump’s ‘sweeping,’ ‘historic’ victory has given MAGA a ‘powerful mandate’ to govern.”

I’m no sports reporter, but I don’t believe anyone would call a football or basketball score of 49-48 a “blowout.” Yes, 49 beats 48, but no rational, unbiased person—at least for those of us in the real world—would regard that as a sweeping victory. Yet the Trump people want to claim that with 49.71% of the popular vote they represent the democratic will of 100% of the American people.

According to Dave Leip’s uselectionatlas.org, a total of 155,512,532 votes were cast for president in 2024. Exactly half of that, 50%, is 77,756,266, which therefore means that 50% plus 1 would be 77,756,267 votes. Donald Trump received 77,303,569 votes, so he was 452,698 votes short of a bare majority; his victory was not a majority of the vote, but a plurality.

Now, you might recall a previous post in which I quoted a man named Glenn Ellmers arguing in response to the 2020 election that “most people living in the United States today—certainly more than half—are not Americans in any meaningful sense of the term.” Unless the 75,019,231 voters who chose Kamala Harris are not real Americans, in the sense that Ellmers said the 81 million Biden million voters were not truly Americans, then it’s difficult to accept the claim that Trump represents the will of the American people.

Of course, it’s a lot more complicated than that, for there are no truly national elections in the U.S. To be sure, only the president runs nationally, but only in the sense that he or she runs in 51 separate elections (each state plus D.C.). In a truly national election, state boundaries would not matter; we simply total up the popular vote across the nation (which would have made Al Gore president in 2000 and Hillary Clinton president in 2016).

It is true, then, that no member of Congress runs nationally: the House represents the American people, but no single Representative does; the Senate represents the American people, but no single Senator does. Yet turn these statements around: while no single U.S. Representative or U.S. Senator represents the American people as a whole, the House as an institution does and the Senate as an institution does.

In this sense, the president, the House, and the Senate all have national constituencies; they each—not the president alone—represent the American people with democratic legitimacy.

But what do we mean by the term “the American people?” In one sense, it refers simply to the roster of individuals living in the U.S. at any given time. Yet in the time it took me to write that sentence, as well as in the time it took you to read it, that roster changed: some people were born, some died; some immigrated, some emigrated.

On the other hand, “the American people” refers to the phrase “We the People” in the Constitution, a timeless entity not reducible to a list or roster; it consists of generations past, present, and future. Let’s name this “the American People” in contrast to “the American people.”

The will of the American People considered as “We the People” in the Constitution can override what the will of the American people considered as the voters might want at any given time. If the courts should invalidate a particular act of Congress or a state legislature, or a particular act of the President or a state governor, they are defending the will of the American People against the will of the American people in a particular place and time. For example, under the 22^nd Amendment, sometimes called the Republicans’ revenge on Roosevelt, the American People prohibit the American people from choosing to elect a president to a third term.

So, yes, any presidential winner of any political party should maintain a certain modesty about what his or her victory means. The winner of an election is typically expected to represent not just his voters (usually, but not always, a majority) but the best interests of the country at large. A president of any party who uses his position to reward friends and punish opponents is certainly not representing “the American people,” not to mention “the American People.”

Modesty, however, appears to have gone out of fashion in our day.

Please check out other columns at the Iowa Writers Collaborative and consider a paid subscription to keep community-based local journalism and commentary alive as we keep you informed. Paid subscribers are invited to the Office Lounge, a live Zoom call on the last Friday of the month at noon Central time.